Hillquit Repeats His Error

Morris Hillquit complains that the discussion
caused by his manifesto on the Communist International
“has tended to obscure rather than clarify the
issue.” I think this is true, and I think the fault lies
entirely with Morris Hillquit. Either he does not know,
or else he is unwilling clearly to state what the Communist
position is. His method of attack is not to mark
out his enemy and then go for him but to raise a great
cloud of dust over him and then exhibit brilliant feats
of arms in the same general vicinity.

In order to lay this dust a little, I am going to
state what seems to me the real point at issue between
Hillquit and the Communists. I hope the reader will
not think that I am attempting to prove that I am
perfect, or that The Liberator is the sole hope of the
revolution, as he might imagine from some of Morris
Hillquit’s replies to my previous article. I have committed
egregious errors, and so has The Liberator, although
I do not acknowledge that either its spirit of
serious play, or the variety of its interests in the world
of ideas, is one of these errors. Neither of those characteristics
makes it unlikely that a wise word might
come out of our magazine. And as for mistakes – it is
not a sin to have made them. It is a sin to be making
them.

The essential point of the Communist position,
in contrast to the position of the “Centrists,” is its
absolute and realistic belief in the theory of the class
struggle, and the theory that all public institutions –
whether alleged to be democratic or not – will prove
upon every critical occasion to be weapons in the hands
of the capitalist class.

All the other “peculiar features of our Communist
friends” flow from this general hypothesis. And
all the confusion and lack of clear deliverance, as well
as the positive errors, in Hillquit’s articles, flow either
from his failure to grasp this cardinal point of the
Communist belief, or else his failure to see how actually
and completely the Communists believe it, or else
his unwillingness to face and confess the truth that he
does not actually and completely believe it himself.

Immediate Realization.

His assertion that the Communists demand in
all countries “an active struggle for the immediate realization”
of Soviet governments, for instance, is but a
way of expressing his incomprehension of their belief
that such a struggle will really come. The difference is
not about what we should do, but about what we
should teach. The truth is that the Third International
not only does not call for the immediate formation of
Soviet governments, but it expressly deprecates the
formation of any soviets at all except under extreme
conditions which it very clearly defines.

In my previous criticism of Morris Hillquit I
made the statement that the Third International had
ceased to stress the necessity of forming soviets.[1]

I inferred
this from the fact that the subject is not mentioned
in the 21 “Conditions of Affiliation,” which
were the only utterance of the recent Congress of the
Third International [2nd: July 19-Aug. 7, 1920] then
in my hand. Now that I have a full text of its resolutions
and statutes, I learn that my inference was wholly
incorrect. The Third International has not ceased to
stress the idea of the soviets, but it has decided that soviets ought not to be formed artificially and in advance
of a revolutionary crisis. They are to be regarded
as instruments of the active struggle, which appear
spontaneously when the masses are filled with revolutionary
enthusiasm, and when the economic and political
crisis is so sharp that power is actually slipping
from the hands of the preceding government. But “in
cases where these conditions are not fulfilled, the Communists
can and should propagate systematically and
stubbornly the idea of the soviets, popularize it, demonstrate
to the deepest layers of the population that
the soviets constitute the only governmental form
which answers to the needs of the period of transition
to total Communism.”

Newness.

“Astounding” is the answer Morris Hillquit
makes to my assertion that there is nothing fundamentally
new in the Communist position but the idea
of soviets. The assertion is true, however, and it can
not be too often repeated. The actual experience of a
successful revolution has only confirmed the opinions
of the revolutionary or thoroughgoing Marxian factions
in all the Socialist parties of the world. It is transforming
these factions from weak and seemingly “academic”
minorities into powerful and active majorities
everywhere. Their opinions seem “new” only to those
of the old majorities who were too indolent or too
scornful to pay studious attention to them when they
were weak. The new thing about them is their power.

Here again if Hillquit were a little more familiar
with the literature of the matter, he would have a different
reaction. He would hardly find my statement
“astounding,” for he would know that Kautsky had
already tried the device of calling Bolshevism “the new
theory” and been ridiculed by Lenin, and effectively
backed out of the arena by the simple method of daring
him “even to approach the analysis of the Commune
of Paris by Marx and Engels.”

And the Communist program and policy is not
more “Russian” than it is new – except as it happens
that the ablest and most devoted of the leaders of the
Left Wing are Russian, and Moscow is the place where
the revolutionary delegates from 34 countries could
most freely and effectively meet together. The reply of
these delegates to some French and German Socialists
who objected to Moscow as a seat for the executive
work of the International was as conclusive as it was
clever. “Just arrange things so we can have the same
facilities in Paris or Berlin,” is what they said.

It is sad indeed to see Eugene Debs duped by
the ingenious pretense that the Left Wing position is a
“Russian” thing, the Communist program an “emanation”
from Moscow.

“The Moscow comrades,” he says, “have arrogated
to themselves the right to dictate the tactics, the
program, the very conditions of propaganda in all
countries. It is ridiculous, arbitrary, autocratic, as ridiculous
as if we were to dictate to them how they
should carry on their propaganda.”

The thing that is ridiculous, arbitrary, and autocratic
is the assumption that “we” – that is Debs and
the rest of the Center and Right – constitute the
American movement. Has Debs forgotten The Revolutionary
Age, edited by Louis C. Fraina, succeeded in
organizing an actual majority of the American Socialist
Party, and that this majority (expelled by the officials
of the minority) is participating in the “dictatorship”
of which he complains, through its natural delegate,
Louis C. Fraina himself, as well as two other
delegates?

Comrade Debs, it is not Moscow that is dictating
to you and your friends of the Right and Center.
It is the Left Wing of the Socialist movement of the
whole world that is dictating to you. And they are dictating
in the very language of the most vigorous and
realistic writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels,
their Communist Manifesto and their analyses of actual
historic events. And this “dictation” amounts only
to a simple and practical statement – if you do not
believe in our principles, you can not come into our
organization and dilute and corrupt them, as all principles
always have been diluted and corrupted in the
past, by near-believers of every description, from conscious
hypocrites to accommodating interpreters.

Dogmatism and Opportunism.

Akin to the charge of newness and nationalism
is the charge of “dogmatism” which Hillquit brings
against the Communist leaders. Or rather, he brings
against the Russian leaders a twin charge of dogmatism
on the one hand and opportunism on the other.

The peculiar features of our Communist friends [he
says] is that, while they seek to force the Socialist movement
of all countries into a rigid mold of dogmatic formula, they
themselves have never hesitated to change their program
and policies to suit the changing conditions of their country,
and it is this political opportunism to which they very largely
own their practical successes.

Here again Hillquit reveals a failure to grasp the
essence of the Communist attitude. It is a failure to
understand the energy and practicality and realism with
which they conceive and conduct the class struggle.
There can be no flexibility in the minds of the people
actually conducting such a struggle as to the existence
of the struggle itself, nor as to the presence of the enemy,
and of his weapons and fortifications. It is either
a struggle or not a struggle, and if it is a struggle, then
– call it dogmatism if you will – there is no use
parleying, collaborating, compromising, and in a million
little ways of speech, action, and idea, obscuring
the issue and clouding the line of battle. Better conceive
it more definite than it is, than more indefinite.
That is the mentality of action. And that is the attitude
of the Bolsheviks toward their own movement,
as well as toward that of foreign countries.

But on the other hand, since it is a battle, and
not the demonstration of a thesis – grab every advantage,
every probability of defeating the enemy that
comes to your mind. Be an opportunist of the most
extreme flexibility, only so your goal is clearly defined
and your compromise is for the sake of that goal, and
not for the sake of some personal end that leads away
from it. It is the compromises of the will that are despicable.
The compromises of practical intelligence,
when the will is inflexible, are of the essence of great
generalship. And it is such compromises that have characterized
the Communist leaders in Russia. What Hillquit
calls their “dogmatism” is the inflexibility of their
will to victory in the class struggle, and what he calls
their “opportunism” is their agility and intellectual freedom
in the conduct of that struggle.

Historic Facts.

It may be his failure to grasp this distinction
between dogmatism of mind and resoluteness of purpose,
which caused Hillquit to give the erroneous account
of the history of the Bolshevik Revolution that
he did give, and still insists on giving. He thinks the
fact that the Bolsheviks participated in the elections for
the Constituent Assembly, trying to capture as many seats
as they could, is a ground for asserting that they had
not at that time conceived the idea of forming a government
of the soviets. At least this fact is the only
ground he has for his assertion.

It will be remembered that in reply to his original
statement that it was not until the Bolsheviks discovered
themselves to be a minority in the Constituent
Assembly and in control of the soviets, that they
coined the slogan, “All power to the Soviets,” I cited
him several issues of Pravda and Izvestiia for June and
July 1917 (they are in the public library); which proved,
beyond the possibility of doubt, that Lenin advocated
the transfer of power to the soviets in the All-Russian
Soviet Convention on June 17th, that Lunacharsky
introduced the Bolshevik resolution demanding “the
transfer of all governmental authority into the hands
of an All-Russian Soviet” a few days later, that on July
1st the Bolsheviks carried in their section of the demonstrations
the slogan “All power to the Soviets,” and
that the extent of their “control” of the soviets at that
time was manifested in 126 votes for their resolution
as against 543 votes for the Menshevik resolution.

Hillquit’s reply to my citations of fact is to admit
that he was wrong in saying that the Bolsheviks
“coined the slogan” only after the elections to the Constituent
Assembly, but to assert that at this earlier time
the slogan had a different meaning – it meant that
the provisional government should be made up entirely
of soviet members. The Bolsheviks were still at that time
intending, he asserts, that the power should go to the
Constituent Assembly when it should be convened.
“Otherwise,” he says, “why call an Assembly, participate
in the elections, and contend for its control?”

That is to say, it is inconceivable for Hillquit
that a party believing in the transfer of governmental
power to the soviets, and yet knowing of the popular
demand for a Constituent Assembly, would join in
the call for an Assembly, participate in the elections,
and try to win as much power there as possible. And
yet, if he would get out of the mood of academic inference
and into the mood of political action, he would
see in a moment that as good generals they could not
possibly do otherwise. Every additional delegate that
they had in the Constituent Assembly – as well as
every one they had in the Congress of Soviets – made it that much easier for them, when the time came, to
tell the Constituent Assembly to go home and go to
bed. It made the success of the transfer of power which
they had been long contemplating more certain.

Does not Morris Hillquit know that Karl Liebknecht
and Rosa Luxemburg advised the German
Communists also to participate in the elections to a
Constituent Assembly, although they were at that time
the uncompromising advocates and organizers of a
soviet government? Surely he knows that. But does he
also know that Lenin has expressly commended them
upon that point, and that the Third International as a
whole has repudiated the German party of so-called
Left Wing Communists [Communist Workers Party
of Germany], who opposed their policy, and still oppose
the general policy of political action. If the attempt
of the Bolsheviks to win seats in the Russian
Constituent Assembly proves that they had not at that
time “conceived the notion” of a Soviet government,
how do you account for their advocating the very same
step in Germany two years later, when they had a Soviet
government in Russia, and the one purpose of their
minds was to produce another in Germany?

If Morris Hillquit would go through those copies
of Izvestiia which I cited to him, in which Lenin
speaks of the soviets as a “type of state,” and in which
the Bolshevik resolution is introduced and discussed,
he would be compelled either to shut his eyes altogether
or else acknowledge his error. But since that is
not enough for him, I will carry the proof still farther
back into the past, and make it still more convincing.

Zinoviev, in his speech about Lenin on the occasion
of his recovery, Sept. 6, 1918, said that he believed
Lenin conceived the idea of a Soviet state during
the revolution of 1905.

He only saw the Soviet in 1905 once or twice, but I am
firmly of the opinion that even then, when he was looking
down from his seat in the balcony upon the first Labor
Parliament, the idea of the Soviet state must have already
been dawning upon his mind.

Inasmuch as Zinoviev worked with Lenin and
under his guidance for the whole 15 years during the
revolution of 1905, we could hardly have a better authority
for the date and place of the birth of this idea.
It is certain that the idea was dawning in Lenin’s mind
by the year 1907, when the All-Russian Congress of
the Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks) was held in London. For in a speech before
that convention on the Bolsheviks’ “Attitude Toward
the Bourgeois Parties” (pg. 272 of the Proceedings)
he spoke of the “Soviets of Workers’ Deputies,
Soviets of Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Deputies” as “the
organs of revolutionary power,” and he described how
at the height of the insurrection against the Tsar’s government,
the bourgeoisie were already dreading and
beginning to fight against these proletarian institutions.
“They saw in them,” he says, “ the revolution going
too far for them” and tried to divert its energy “into
the channel of police-constitutional reaction.”

These citations, whose existence I was sure of,
but which I could not get my hands on at the time of
my previous reply to Hillquit, make it fairly certain
that Lenin understood the role that the soviets were to
play in the revolutionary state many years before he
came to Russia in April of 1917. But that he understood
it, and preached it without the slightest qualification
the very moment he came here, is beyond any
doubt. And since Hillquit is contented to be only a
little ironical about my citations of Pravda and Izvestiia
– which he says are not on sale at his newsstand
– I will now cite him something that has been on sale
at least on the newsstands of the Rand School for over
2 years. That is the “Theses of Lenin” presented at a
meeting of the leaders of his party in St. Petersburg
the day after his arrival (April 4th [17th]). These theses
were published in No. 26 of Pravda for April 7th
(20th), 1917, and are to be found in Louis C. Fraina’s
volume, The Proletarian Revolution in Russia, published
by The Communist Press in New York in 1918. Even
if we assume that Lenin first “conceived the notion” of
setting up the soviets as a permanent governmental
institution” at that time, it will be instructive to Morris
Hillquit to see how clearly he conceived it, and how
well he was aware at the same time of the petty minority
that his party could command in the soviets, or
anywhere else. I quote a few sentences from numbers
2, 3, 4, and 5 of these Theses.

(2) The peculiar character of the present situation in
Russia lies in the fact that it represents the transition from
the first stage of the Revolution, which has placed power in
the hands of the capitalist class as a result of the insufficient
class-consciousness and organization of the proletariat, to
its second stage, which must transfer power into the hands
of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasantry.
(3) No support of the Provisional Government:
demonstration of the utter mendacity of all its pledges,
especially concerning the renunciation of annexations.
Exposure as a policy, instead of the inadmissible and illusionsowing
“demand” that the government, a government of
capitalists, should cease to be imperialist.
(4) Recognition of the fact that, in the majority of
Councils of Workers’ Deputies, our part is in a minority – in
a weak minority as yet – as against the coalition of all the
lower middle class opportunist elements which have
succumbed to the influence of the capitalist class and which
transmit this influence to the proletariat, from the Populist
Socialists and Socialist Revolutionaries down to the
Organization Committee of the Social Democratic Party
(Chkheidze, Tseretelli, etc.), Steklov, and others.
Enlightenment of the masses as to the fact that the
Councils of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of
revolutionary government, and that therefore our duty, while
the government is still under the influence of the capitalist
class, can only be patiently, systematically, persistently, in
a manner adapted to the practical requirements of the
masses, to explain its mistakes and tactics.
While we are in the minority, we carry on the work of
criticism and explanation of mistakes, urging at the same
time the necessity of the transfer of all power to the Councils
of Workers’ Deputies, in order that the masses may free
themselves from mistakes by actual experience.
(5) Not a parliamentary republic – a return to it from
the Councils of Workers’ Deputies would be a step backward
– but a republic of Councils of Workmens’, Laborers’, and
Peasants’ Deputies throughout the country and from top to
bottom.

At about the same time that these theses were
published, Lenin published an analysis of the different
political parties in Russia, and their attitudes to
the leading questions of the day. And in that analysis
Hillquit will find, side by side, the answers of the Bolsheviks
to these two questions:

Are we for a single authority or a dual authority?

Shall a Constituent Assembly be called?

The answer of the Bolsheviks to the first question
was:

“For sole power in the hands of the Councils of
Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants, from top to bottom
over the whole country.”

And their answer to the second question was:

“Yes, and as soon as possible.”

I do not think any further citations ought to be
necessary, but I will add these words from “A Letter
on Tactics,” which Lenin published in Pravda at the
same time with the theses which I have quoted. (This
letter has also been in the Rand School since 1918.)

Apart from a capitalist government there can be no
government in Russia outside the soviets of Workers’,
Laborers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.

Now I ask Morris Hillquit to lay aside all his
pride of authority and acknowledge that he was flatly
and absolutely wrong, not only in asserting that the
Bolsheviks “coined the phrase” All power to the Soviets
after they had captured a majority in the soviets;
but also in asserting that “it was then and then only
that they...discovered that the Soviets were the only
logical instrument of proletarian rule”; and also in repeating
that assertion in his reply to me in the following
words: “It was only When the Bolsheviki found
themselves in a minority in the Constituent Assembly
that they conceived the notion that the Soviets must
supplant the Assembly and be set up as a permanent
governmental organization.